Sam's heart scare is a life lesson

A ROMSEY School where a pupil’s heart was restarted by quick-thinking staff is to stage an event to teach those life savings skills to hundreds of other pupils.

The Mountbatten School will be joining St John Ambulance’s “Big First Aid Lesson” on June 20.

It comes after one of its pupils, Sam Mangoro, 16, collapsed during a PE lesson.

His life was saved by teachers who used their knowledge of first aid and a defibrillator machine to restart his heart.

As a result of that incident, a campaign has been started to get defibrillators put into every Hampshire school.

Mountbatten head, Heather Mcllroy, said: “Every person in a school community should know how to save lives and administer first aid. “Our recent experience involving the saving of a 16-year-old student’s life has made us realise the importance of all adults and students being trained in first aid.”

St John Ambulance will be staging the Big First Aid Lesson, to help combat a lack of knowledge in those vital skills.

They are urging more than 125 schools in the South-East, including Hampshire, to take part. The free one-hour online first aid session is being streamed live to classrooms across the country.

The lesson will feature an interactive programme which combines first aid learning with interviews and real life stories.

Research by St John Ambulance revealed that under a quarter of schools in the South-East teach first aid.

The charity is urging teachers and school staff not to wait for the Government to act because too many lives are lost needlessly through a lack of first aiders.

The research also showed that 97 per cent of teachers across schools in the south believe it is vital for young people to learn life-saving skills in school, but they cited a lack of time, staff training and cost as barriers to introducing the lessons in the classroom.

Regional Schools and CommunityTraining Manager for St John Ambulance, Chris Cook, said: “It’s so easy to learn and can have such an incredible impact on people’s lives but, because it’s not compulsory on the national curriculum, only a minority of schoolchildren would know what to do if one of their classmates, or a member of their family became ill or injured.”

"It only takes an hour to learn how to save a life, but it could be the most important lesson your students ever learn.”

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